They Don’t Do Media Training at The Academy?
So, I promise to shut up about celebrity PR stuff eventually, it’s just that I get so much fodder for it on a daily basis, since so many of them are such complete PR lunkheads. Who can resist blogging about Britney’s latest meltdown?
Despite my rampant consumption of the celebrity gossip machine, I must admit to being something of a celebrity sympathizer. Don’t get me wrong, I think that anyone who pursues a path they know will land them in the public eye should expect to deal with the accompanying aggro without complaint.
That being said, it must really be a massive pain in the ass to have to hire security just to drop your kid off at school–and for that matter, having to worry about perverts getting a gander at your kids’ pictures every week in freaking Us Weekly. (Although I’m sure that when they’ve had it up to here with their public, they comfort themselves on their designer pillows stuffed with $100 bills, shortly after their refreshing rose-petal Evian baths.)
So yes, I sympathize. But not when a celebrity makes it so very clear just how little regard they have for their own PR, and doesn’t even try to learn how to present a decent public image when they know full well what will happen when they don’t. Especially in this day and age, when social media blasts celeb screw-ups worldwide the very moment they happen.
I wrote a post for the CustomScoop blog during the Imus debacle, wondering if celebrities had always been so stupid or if the death of the news cycle has made things worse:
I have no doubt that public figures have been putting their feet in their mouths for as long as language has existed, but the trappings of the modern era have made things far worse for the celebrity prone to faux pas.
Ten years ago, Michael Richards’ racist rants in a comedy club may have made the news, but would the media frenzy have lasted quite as long in a time when cell phone cameras, blogs and YouTube did not exist?
Every celebrity knows that blogs like TMZ and Perez Hilton will be all over any media misstep in seconds. There is no way to guarantee that your life will remain gossip-free, or even free of faux pas. It happens, we’re all human.
But in the era of gossip blogs and YouTube and endless ways for anyone to get every detail every time you get drunk or flip the bird to a photog, my mother would probably be telling the Lindsays and Britneys of the world to “Smarten up!” I’m just telling them to hire better publicists.
Or, apparently in Brit’s case, any publicist at all. Because girlfriend needs a lot more than just psychiatric help.
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